


teen idle

by thefudge



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Dark, Dark Jughead Jones, F/M, Obsession, Possessive Behavior, Stalking, Veronica has some skeletons in the closet too, idk what this is, ost: teen idle - marina and the diamonds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21697969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: It catches him unawares, the slow thread of obsession. Stalking AU.
Relationships: Jughead Jones/Veronica Lodge
Comments: 13
Kudos: 110





	teen idle

**Author's Note:**

> idk what this is, folks. i began writing it after i made the swimfan edit for jeronica week (https://thefudge.tumblr.com/post/188638686263/jeronica-week-day-1-trash-movie-swimfan-2002) but it has metamorphosed into a slightly different beast. i just really wanted to write a weird and slightly gross stalker!jughead AU, okay? i'm only human.

_I wish I wasn't such a narcissist  
I wish I didn't really kiss  
The mirror when I'm on my own  
Oh God, I'm gonna die alone _

He’s seven when he watches a wildlife documentary about tigers hiding in plain sight. 

The narrator cheerfully explains that deer are unable to see the colors red and orange. The tiger’s mane is as green to them as the underbrush in which he lurks. As such, the tiger does not need to make a special effort to capture his prey. He only needs to be quiet. Nature will take care of the rest. 

Jughead mimics the narrator’s cadence, his dispassionate voice. He narrates the discovery in his own voice. He studies the colors of his town, the washed-up shades of blue and grey. He wonders what it would be like to hide in plain sight. 

The people of Riverdale are just like deer. They can never see the tiger in the underbrush. 

  
  


His fingers are always busy. 

He’s got files on so many people, sometimes he loses track. Sticky photos in sticky albums in sticky boxes hidden away. Even in the age of the digital, he likes the physicality of it, of touching a person’s face inside celluloid. He collects all sorts of memorabilia; objects the people he pursues may have dropped in the parking lot, at the cinema, while standing in line. He’s got a good excuse. He’s a writer. He has to study people, he has to pick up after them. 

_I’m a writer, I swear_ , he comments and adds lots of smiley faces as he talks to people on forums about duct tape and thermal binoculars. This is all research. 

  
  


And then she arrives in town. 

New girl, very typical. 

He sees her profile in passing when the limousine windows roll down. 

There's no initial flash of intuition. No event. 

Just another spoiled little rich girl, Park Avenue brat. Private school, trust fund, daddy in jail, the works.

Nothing really special. 

Pretty, in that classical Hollywood way.

Wears dark red lipstick and pearls and stilettos that do not make her taller, no matter how hard she tries. 

She is small, compact, furious.

Needs to prove she is not like her family. 

This is all he gets at a cursory glance when she makes her entrance on Monday. 

He thinks, _new file_. But he doesn’t put too much thought in it. It’s just habit at this point. 

In fact, he finds Veronica Lodge rather insipid. A fake, a phony, a dilettante. Everything he despises in the super privileged. 

Betty and Archie tell him to go easy on her. Everyone can see he has nothing but disdain for the new “IT girl”.

She’s part of the popular crowd. Already threatening Cheryl Blossom’s Queen Bee status. 

He has no interest in these teenage squabbles. 

Still, he starts a file. 

  
  


_Wears a black hooded cape almost everywhere she goes,_ he notes in his file. _Like some vengeful version of Little Red Riding Hood. What wolf is she trying to lure?_

Jughead pauses, stares at the blue screen. The word _wolf,_ the sound of it, the shape of it, like a strange caress. 

He hits backspace.

He tries to be objective when he collects information. The last comment is too narratorial, too wry.

He saves the personal comments for his novel.

But she won’t be in it.

Why would she? 

  
  


Why would she, indeed? 

She’s no one interesting. 

  
  


It catches him unawares, the slow thread of obsession. 

“This town is very _In Cold Blood_ , and I’m strictly _Breakfast At Tiffany’s_ ,” she tells them with what she hopes is flair and nonchalance. Betty smiles. Kevin approves, _adores_.

Jughead pops a fry in his mouth, holds his tongue.

He goes home and exhumes his old copy of _In Cold Blood._ Maybe his favorite piece of writing in the world. He squeezes it between his fingers. He feels a strange tension between his shoulder blades. 

  
  


He sidles in the booth next to Archie, facing the new girl. She is talking a mile a minute about her adventures in Monaco, or Prague, or the Hague or some other European city he doesn’t want to hear about. 

Pop brings over their milkshakes.

He notices she also ordered chocolate. He stares at her fingers idling with the straw. 

“Why not return to sunny Monaco?” he asks, not aggressively, not even snidely. He genuinely wants to know. “Since you loved it so much there.” Okay, maybe it comes off a little sarcastic. 

Veronica pauses. She clears her throat. The straw twirls around her finger. Her eyes look at him from very far away. “I will, one day. I’ll send you postcards, if you like.” Her tone is dismissive. 

_If you like._

Betty laughs. “Please do.” 

Veronica moves on breezily, not sparing him another glance.

Jughead notices how straight her spine is, how her back doesn’t touch the booth at all. He drinks his chocolate milkshake. 

  
  


She waltzes into the Blue and Gold's office and tells him and Betty she has an idea for a "stupendous" article. 

All about her meeting with some South American dignitary at a Humanitarian Gala last winter and swapping ideas about renewable energy and education funding. 

She wants to write about something meaningful, you see. She wants to care about important things from now on. 

Mostly, he thinks, she wants to show off her connections. He smiles a cool, cutting smile. "Oh, I don't know. I think our South American dignitaries' column is all booked up this month."

A small muscle twitches under her eye. She clenches her manicured fingers. "I take it you're the hard to please editor in chief?"

Betty intervenes quickly. "No, he's not. That article sounds amazing, Veronica."

Jughead holds her gaze for a moment longer, before lowering his eyes. "Sorry, I'm only teasing. You're new. There's a hazing ritual."

Veronica's face lights up. She laughs. "You got me there."

But she doesn't sound entirely amused. 

"Since when do we haze potential writers?" Betty asks him after Veronica leaves.

Jughead ducks his head. "There's just something so pretentious about her -"

"Um, sorry to break it to you, Jug, but you're pretty pretentious yourself," Betty tells him with a fond smile.

Jughead resents her judgement, even though it's true. 

He smiles back ruefully. "Okay, maybe."

Because Betty is a good friend, and she always means well. Her file says so. 

It soon becomes obvious Veronica is interested in Archie’s sculpted looks and boyish softness. Archie’s the rare breed of jock who is kind and thoughtful.It’s pretty predictable, but Jughead can’t fault her tastes. Archie is stellar. 

Jughead knows, however, that she has the power to hurt his friend. Riverdale is just a vacation for her. Archie is merely a distraction until she returns to her trust-fund boyfriends. He doesn’t know how to tell her to back off. 

Veronica taps him on the arm with the folded dollar bills. Doesn’t make direct contact. “Here. Burger’s on me.” 

Her smile is honeyed, with a dash of impatience. 

Jughead grabs the money, smirks.

“She knows what she’s doing,” he tells Archie as he slides out of the booth and gives Veronica his seat.

He watches the potential lovebirds from the counter. He bites into the burger and follows the intricate dance of her hands, as she draws Archie further into her web. 

He’s about to turn away when Veronica looks up briefly, dark eyes meeting his. There’s a half-moon at the corner of her mouth, it only lasts a second, before she returns her attention to the redhead in front of her. Jughead feels a strange whoosh in his stomach. He doesn’t know what that was, if it was friendly acknowledgement or challenge. Or just Veronica Lodge, browsing. 

He leaves his burger half-finished.

At the end of the night, Archie is walking her home.

Jughead trails behind them like a spiteful shadow. He could have given them their privacy. But he's bunking with Archie tonight. He's good at finding reasons to follow people. 

Veronica is slightly bothered by his lugubrious presence.

She clings to Archie's arm, eyes the intruder over her shoulder.

"Did you enjoy the burger? I saw you didn't finish."

Jughead smiles coolly. "Thanks for noticing." 

She turns her head away. 

He means it.

_You watch me too?_

No.

Otherwise, she'd notice other things.

The way she holds her handbag on the exact mid-length of her lower arm annoys him. He’s started cataloging where the thick strap lands, how hard it bites into her flesh as she struts into school every morning. 

He notices the red mark left on her arm in class, the way she rubs at it. What does she carry in that bag that makes it so heavy? 

  
  


She reads books in class. Not the books assigned for reading. She hardly ever takes notes. 

They are talking about _Julius Caesar_ today, but she is absorbed by Marilyn French. Does not look up once from her book, does not even acknowledge their teacher’s existence. She is self-sufficient like a remote island, even though she is desperate to make connections and prove to people she can be loved. The teacher does not call on her. Even she seems intimidated by the dark-haired girl who is part of a different class, literally and figuratively. 

Jughead peels his thumb, underlines words in the play, words like “worthiness”, “immortal”, “age’s yoke”. He feels she is encroaching on his territory, posing as the bookish outsider in class, only to bloom into a social butterfly outdoors. 

What’s more distressing is that maybe she’s not posing. He doesn’t know. He feels a gnawing in his stomach like hunger, because he’s always hungry, but it’s different this time. Like a need to eat a special kind of meal. And nothing else will do.

He tries to ignore it. 

In the lounge, he overhears Veronica telling Betty that she’s never really had friends, _real_ friends, but that she’s starting to believe she can. 

He plops down loudly in a corner of the couch. 

Veronica looks up, smiles. She’s slightly embarrassed, afraid he overheard.

“Hello, Jughead.”

“Don’t worry, pretend I’m not here,” he says, powering up his laptop. 

He hides himself behind the screen. 

"Oh, I don't think that's possible," she says after a few moments.

She kisses Betty on the cheek, and walks away.

Her heels bore little holes straight into his brain.

  
  


He finds out when she has cheer practice. Sometimes she leaves her bag in the girls’ changing room, which is not very careful of her. He sneaks in one afternoon. He doesn’t even _really_ have to sneak. No one could ever be threatened by Jughead Jones, not really. No one could suspect him of having nefarious intentions. He is the artsy, sensitive type. Classified as an antisocial loner only because his heart is too big, his imagination too _vivid_. 

He filches her bag and takes a clinical look through it. There’s the usual assortment of “emergency makeup”, elegantly stashed in a smaller utility bag, a black agenda with gilded pages and a sleek fountain pen attached, a vial of perfume that looks almost Victorian, a phone charger, a reusable steel water bottle, and a book. He looks through the agenda first, hoping it functions more as a diary. But no, it’s filled with dates and phone numbers and to-do lists and school notes. Her writing is small, precise, a little elongated towards the end of a sentence. She still writes in cursive. School-marmish. 

He unscrews the cap off the steel water bottle, brings the mouth close to his nose, sniffs. It smells like Chanel. Everything in the bag does. He is tempted to put his mouth where her mouth has been, but he paces himself. He doesn’t rush into it. He finally looks at the book. It’s a copy of _We Need To Talk About Kevin_ , with the murderous teen’s face staring back at him on the cover. 

Jughead snorts. He laughs. He’s caught off-guard.

His laugh turns brutish, hyena-like. 

He puts it all back carefully, but he takes the vial of perfume. 

It won’t make the bag any less heavy. 

  
  


They get in an argument about the Twilight Drive-In and its lack of sustainability. 

“In this age of Netflix and VOD, do people really want to watch a movie in a car? I mean, who even goes there anymore? Except for people who want to buy drugs.” 

Jughead can feel the blood rush in his ears. He almost blurts out that he’s going to be homeless soon, so she should shut the fuck up. He doesn’t, though. But it’s hard to keep his cool. He says it’s about the plight of the cinephile, the _true_ cinephile. 

Veronica raises an eyebrow. “You realize the drive-in’s main function in the past was for people to hook up, not to watch movies.” 

Jughead scowls. “Actually, it was a populist movement, a way to democratize movie-viewing and make it accessible to the disenfranchised -”

Veronica smiles. “The disenfranchised? For someone so cynical, you’re certainly being naive.”

Jughead flinches. _Naive_.

He feels a vein throb painfully against his forehead. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Veronica flicks her hair over her shoulder, undisturbed. “Neither do you.” 

He clenches his fist under the table. 

Betty notices his dark look and clears her throat awkwardly. “O-okay, maybe we should change the topic.”

“Actually, I’m going to get some air,” Veronica announces coolly,, slipping past them in her dark cape. 

Jughead simmers. Doesn’t even have an appetite anymore. 

  
  


That night, he dreams he is a time traveler. He dreams he’s traveled back to a time where you waited outside to pick up a girl to go to the movies. 

The images go fast. He doesn’t realize he’s driving Veronica Lodge to the drive-in until they’re in the middle of it. She sits next to him in a sleek Ford Thunderbird, the paint gleaming like teeth. All the trappings of the era are there, including her chiffon poodle skirt and her ankle-length white socks. She wears a headband over her dark hair. She smiles at him with hidden meaning. 

_What are we going to do at the movies?_ Her eyes ask. And it’s the same smug challenge, the same timeless pluck, the unalloyed core of the Park Avenue brat who thinks she’s got him pegged. 

Images flash by in quick succession. Soon they are staring at a giant naked screen, completely black. The couples around them get cozy, start necking and groping in the dark, while an invisible movie plays for no one at all. 

Jughead stares at the screen stubbornly. This is what he came here for. Veronica follows his example. She watches the blackness with infinite curiosity. They are absorbed in this anti-movie. 

After what feels like hours, he wonders about reaching out to touch her, just to still feel she is there. When he finally does, his fingers accidentally touch her neck, right on top of the string of pearls. He removes his hand quickly, as if licked by fire. 

Veronica doesn’t look at him as she says in a dreamy dark cadence, “do you want to take them?” 

Jughead shakes his head, but it doesn’t translate in the dream. 

Veronica shrugs. “You couldn’t, anyway. They’re mine.”

Something rankles him about her statement, something deeply primeval, something about possession and living things. 

_I could have them_ , he thinks. _If I wanted to._

The last image burnt on his retinas is of his hands around her neck, pearls clattering to the floor, gliding between the seats. 

(no, that's not entirely true. 

that's what he _thinks_ is the last image.

he wants to remember it like that. 

but it's not the last image.

it goes deeper.

beyond the flesh.

inside her throat. he tastes a scream.)

He wakes up with a big gulp of night air.

He can smell her perfume on his sheets, on his pillow. On his fingers. 

It spooks him. 

His own fixation spooks him, its _proximity_. As if she had been here, in the trailer. 

He realizes a few moments later that he’s still got her vial of perfume. Somewhere. In a pocket, tucked away. He has to find it.

He’s usually far more careful about objects he takes from people. He compartmentalizes them, item by item. 

The sweat cools off on his back unpleasantly. 

He begins to meticulously search his room, then the entire trailer. He turns furniture upside down, makes a big heap of his shirts and socks. Lies down between them towards dawn, exhausted. 

He can’t find the vial anymore. 

It’s not like him, to have lost it. 

But he’s lost it. 

The photos on his crime-board can be explained. His dad doesn’t have a problem with his hobby. The boy’s got an obsession. He’s hellbent on solving Jason Blossom’s murder, and for that, he needs a visual map of the entire town and its inhabitants. 

This isn't his first crime-board. FP remembers the newspaper cut-outs, the yellowing Polaroids. Those are the only parts he remembers about Jughead's childhood. He wasn't there half the time. 

Yeah, maybe he's noticed that the Lodges pop up in several photos, the same dark trio, Hermione and Hiram and Veronica, glossy ravens, portends of doom. But he doesn’t make much of it, because they’re the new folks in town, of course everyone is curious.

He has no idea his son knows he does favors for Hermione Lodge. Jughead has a file on his own dad. Jughead knows where his dad goes, what he does. Jughead loves and hates his dad in equal parts. 

He’s saving up this tasty morsel of information, waiting for the right time to tell Veronica what exactly her mother does with her free time. 

He isn’t sure if he should tell her about Hermione’s flirtations with Fred Andrews. That’s old news. Everyone in town can see the old flames kindling. 

Does it bother her?

He stares at Veronica’s face, spattered all across his board. He made sure not to single her out too much. But she’s still the center of the web. 

Well, not like - not like _she_ killed Jason.

She couldn't have.

She's new.

And still, the threads, _his_ threads, wound around her. 

He wonders if it’s normal. 

Oh, he knows it’s not. 

But he wonders if it’s normal to be obsessed with someone while also wanting them to disappear. 

  
  


He lies down in bed and thinks about her disappearing. 

Chasing her out of town. Like hunting an animal, but hoping you’ll scare it off the perimeter. 

Following her into the woods, watching her dark outline blur. 

He is a tiger, he doesn’t need to hide. The deer can’t tell his color from the underbrush. 

But she stares directly at him. She points her finger at him. 

“I see you.”

Jughead swallows thickly. 

“I see you. I see what you do in the dark.”

He’s close. So close. 

“You’re pathetic,” she says in that schoolmarm voice, lifting her chin. She stands on the side of the highway, untouchable. The wood's dark jaws behind her.

She carries her heavy purse on her arm. She takes out something shiny and metallic. “You think you can catch me. But you can’t even touch me. You can’t even touch yourself.”

He strokes himself angrily, strokes himself thinking about a gun, a knife, whatever she is willing to wield. 

Veronica chuckles. “Is that the best you can do?”

He comes with a low growl, a soft cry.

Flashes of dark fabric, precious silks, smudged lipstick, metallic shine.

The terror in her eyes right before he drags her down. 

Fingers sticky with her. 

  
  


Jughead watches her lead the cheer dance at the homecoming game. He sits on the bleachers and types random words in his open document. 

She has a distinct way of shaking her ass that ruffles her skirt just the right amount. No more, no less. Is she being a tease or a prude? 

He’s noticed for all her bold and glamorous outfits, she only gives the _impression_ of bare skin. The more you stare, the more you realize she is a fortress, and all she reveals is a layer upon layer. 

Is it her Catholic roots? 

(her parents’ religious background is part of her file)

Is she a believer? Does she go to church? 

Is she the full cliche? 

_Are you a good Catholic schoolgirl? Do you say your prayers at night? Do you think He hears you? Do you think He watches over you?_ he types absently, still thinking of layers. 

Veronica grins as she raises her poms in the air. 

_Dirty little slu-_

He hits backspace quickly. 

Does anyone ever hear us? Does anyone ever watch over us?

Or rather, are we _always_ watched? 

He follows her with his eyes as she goes up to kiss a sweaty, victory-crowned Archie Andrews on the football field.

She kisses with eyes open, blinking fast, already forming words on her lips.

Betty stops by the happy couple, looking wistfully at Archie in the dark girl’s arms. Before Veronica Lodge arrived in town, she was on the brink of telling Archie how she feels. Jughead is pretty certain Archie would have responded eagerly. 

Now he dangles around Veronica’s neck like a new cast of pearls. 

Jughead rubs the cold-bitten redness of his knuckles. 

Someone has to stop her from taking things.  
  
  



End file.
